London seems to be moving towards an NI deal with the EU

Last night there was a telling development when Liz Truss addressed NI Conservatives at the Tory conference in Birmingham.

While the prime minister talked about the importance of restoring east-west trade and therefore the Belfast Agreement (which is government code for saying that the 1998 peace deal is not just a document that meets certain nationalist demands) she did not say anything of substance about it.

The NI secretary Chris-Heaton Harris and his junior minister Steve Baker also addressed the gathering and said nothing of note about politics, let alone the internal UK border.

Northern Ireland Conservatives cheered all three speakers, and seemed merely delighted that they were there, as opposed to concerned at their failure to give assurances over reforming Boris Johnson’s Irish Sea border.

This failure was all the more notable given the way in which unionists have, rightly, expressed alarm at Mr Baker’s apology to the Irish government. At one point this government was led by Leo Varadkar, a man who showed international leaders a report on a bombing at a border post during the Troubles — a highly misleading and irresponsible move, given that that was an IRA terror attack that was launched in opposition to the very existence of the border by a murderous organisation that found safe haven in the Republic.

The problem with Ms Truss’s apparent focus on a deal with the EU over Northern Ireland is not that such a deal is of itself impossible and necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that the EU has only been prepared to move in minor ways that will continue to leave a constitutional absurdity in place, in which the UK loses control of its territory in terms of trade.

Even if the EU drops all checks, that loss of control will remain in place. We need clarity from London, yet clarity is not forthcoming, just meaningless praise for Northern Ireland.